Dante Gabriel Rossetti And the Late Victorian Sonnet Sequence: Sexuality, Belief And the Self (Nineteenth Century Series)

In 1870, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published the first version of his sonnet sequence "The House of Life". Over the next twenty years, dozens of poets wrote thousands of sonnets resulting in the greatest flourishing of the sonnet sequence since the 1590s. John Holmes's carefully researched and eloquent study explores the causes behind this remarkable outpouring, illuminating the contributions of the leading late Victorian sonneteers to the poetry and culture of their age. The sonnet sequence had traditionally engaged with questions of religious belief, sexual love and selfhood. By the 1860s, belief was threatened by radical scientific theories, while sexual attraction had been complicated by shifting gender relations and emerging ideas of sexuality. Poets such as Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, John Addington Symonds, Augusta Webster and Rosa Newmarch drew on the heritage of the sonnet sequence to create poetic self-portraits that are unsurpassed in their subtlety, complexity, courage, and honesty.